Thursday, June 30, 2011

On the road again! Well, I've already been on the road for many days now, gathering supplies, dropping off, picking up and saying goodbye to friends and family I may not see again for some time.

Like all good road trips, the difference is in the travel snacks ;)

However, today is the day I meet up with my other road-mates and the official summer trek across the country begins at dawn tomorrow:California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas (stay tuned for some possible TV appearances there with my old pals from the NASA studies in Houston!), Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and down into Florida to see Atlantis STS-135 launch from Cape Canaveral!

And once I'm there? I'm there. I'm staying. I don't care if that Shuttle launch gets scrubbed and then scrubbed again -- for months! I'm not missing this.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

It would take 333,000 Earths to equal the weight of our Sun, which loses four million tons of itself each second as it delivers nearly a kilowatt of energy to each square yard of the Earth's sunlit surface.

The Sun is not always at the exact middle of the solar system. It shifts by its own diameter in varied directions, depending mostly on Jupiter's position. Jupiter's 12-year orbit is not around the Sun, but around a point NEAR the Sun. Meanwhile, the Sun too, performs a small orbit around that spot, which it completes every 11.86 Earth years.

Greek scholar Thales of Miletus (624-546 BC) was the first human to accurately plot and record the path of the Sun across the sky, and the first to predict an eclipse in 585 BC. Anaxagoras (500-428 BC) was the first to postulate than the moon reflects light from the sun, rather than glowing on its own.

Aristotle (384-322) then held back science for the next two thousand years with his geocentric model of the universe, where the Earth was fixed and the Sun moved around it. This somehow became church doctrine until the time of Galileo -- and any attempt to question it meant being burned at the stake.

In 1714, clergyman Tobias Swinton wrote a book claiming the Sun was Hell, since there would be too little room for all the current and future damned souls, not to mention that having the fire and brimstone beneath the earth's surface would soon be snuffed by lack of air. All righty then.

In contrast, Charles Palmer published a theory in 1798 saying the sun was made of ice, arguing that the Bible claimed light existed before God created the Sun. It must not be a source of light but rather simply a reflector of light from the rest of the universe, which was clearly focused on Earth.

The Sun kills about a million people per year, with desert exposure, dehydration complications, and melanomas.

People in the villages near the Konark Sun Temple (Orissa, India) bathe before and after any eclipse of the Sun, which is considered dangerous – so much so that any food prepared during such an event is regarded as poisonous and pregnant women take particular care to keep their eyes tightly shut, lest the fetus be malformed.

Spending just 10 minutes in strong sunlight, the kind you get from 11am to 3pm between April and August, will allow your body to make as much vitamin D as you would get from drinking 200 glasses of milk.

As in his columns or speeches, he is humorous and delightfully un-condescending in his sharing of astronomical knowledge (and I mean that in both the literal and adjectival senses!), making this a fluid read. In fact, the fluidity is addictive. I'd planned to read the book next week and review it in July prior to its 7/13 release, but wound up finishing it after just two sittings, quite unable to put it down.

"At it's most elemental, the Sun is the sole source of our life and energy... Everything about the sun is either amazing or useful. Beyond the peculiar history of its discoveries by a motley collection of geniuses, it directly or indirectly affects our lives, our health, our emotions, and even our dollars."~ Bob Berman

As interesting as any biography of a person who lived a long and interesting life, this book unfolds the life of our Sun, and the millennias-long melodrama of our quest to understand this amazing entity, as discovered through the eyes of an esteemed cast of characters: Galileo, Kepler, Halley, Schwabe, Herschel, Pauli, Kirchhoff & Bunsen. Wait... Kirchhoff & Bunsen? Yeah, and you don't know the most stunning discoveries about the Sun until you know their work (proving once again how scientific Zeitgeist often rewards entirely the wrong people).

What makes the sun shine? Recorded history shows we tried to figure that out for about 25 thousand generations. Those of us alive today have known the truest answer for just one human lifetime: the fusing together of hydrogen nuclei, and fusing its helium into heavier elements.

From Babylonian scientists recording sun spots 3 thousand years ago to current climate change debates, through ancient religions and alchemy to modern sciences such as heliophysics and helioseismology, Bob Berman brings alive the Sun's gifts to planet Earth: how we divine the Sun's properties through water, weather and tree rings; the sun's role in the evolution of life forms in terms of how fast mutations occur, as evidenced by fossil records; and, even how petty fights between dueling scientists often led to advancements in the knowledge of our solar god.

Subtitles of the book could easily include Sunscreen 101, the Vitamin D chronicles, Aurora-Chasing, How a Solar Eclipse Can Change Your Life, and Hey, Twenty Trillion Neutrinos Are Slamming Through Your Head Every Second! Really.

Berman's new writing gig

Berman lays out the heliophysics in detail; not the dry stuff of textbook mechanics, but rather the dynamic story of superstitions versus experiments, and finally, modern scientific method and measurement. From believing the sun was a deity to understanding the very foundations of what made our solar system possible, he makes the Sun precisely what it is: a STAR!

And he does so with quips and quirky prose that will make you read the lines twice to make sure you are actually reading a science book instead of a Dilbert strip: "Neutrons don't help us and don't hurt us: they're like coleslaw," and "Sagittarius resembles an archer the way I resemble Brad Pitt" are among the LOL moments. And he actually used the words KAPLOOIE and SHAZAM. Awesome. My favorite, to the chagrin of astronauts everywhere, had to be: "Once you venture outside Earth's protective field, your HMO would be wise to stop covering you."

Friday, June 24, 2011

While creating my post yesterday for all the official NASA twitter feeds, I was surprised to note that the Near Earth Objects Program, colloquially known as "Asteroid Watch" or "Spaceguard", is approaching a million followers!

Are folks really that worked up about asteroids hitting Earth? Well, in answer to my question, the man tasked with teaching us about the NEO Program had the Arizona Meteor Crater on his introduction slide, LOL! So there you are. Things can and do hit the Earth from time to time, and will continue to do so.

Want to see one? It so happens that this coming Monday, June 27, 2011... a school-bus-sized asteroid NASA has named "2011 MD" will come within 12,000 kilometers (or 7,500 miles) of Earth. Not the closest or largest that has skittered near our atmosphere, but visible by amateur telescope from many areas – and a fine chance for NASA to examine the properties of the asteroid in infrared, radar and visual observations.

You wouldn't think anyone could make killer asteroids so blasted hilarious, would you?! The speaker above, NEO Project Manager Don Yeomans, started by highlighting the architecture of the solar system, as such: we have rocky planets in the inner region, gaseous giants further out, various "belts" of leftover small bodies and a distant comet cloud. Simple enough, right?

Yes, well perhaps in 1900, when we shrugged about it because we simply didn't have the technology to spot much of anything. He zoomed through slides showing discoveries in 1950, 1990, 1999 and finally 2011. And. Wow. It suddenly starts to seem rather amazing that we don't have more craters.

While conventional wisdom of past eras of science suggests the main "asteroid belt" lies roughly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but in more recent days, stargazers are learning that asteroids can make very close approaches to Earth with far greater frequency than previously assumed.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

So I follow twelve NASA Twitter feeds, and lived under the delusion that I was following a great many! I checked the NASA Connect page from time to time for new things, but it had been awhile... and what an explosion over the past year! However, theirs is slightly out-of-date, so here is the full list now. Truly, they need someone like me to curate this for them -- alas, no one has made me QUEEN yet.

I was one of those folks who didn't quite understand Twitter when I signed up to Tweet, but over time have seen the fascination with micro-blogging in the 140-character culture. So! If you're interested in keeping up with various NASA facilities and individual missions, here is the full spate of NASA Twitter feeds... along with the current snapshot of followers:

@NASA News From NASA - 1,173,085I just love that this account has over a million!

Interestingly, the only NASA mission feeds with more followers than the administrative accounts of the centers are the Astrobiology Institute and Asteroid Watch! It would seem the two larger human interests are... finding non-humans and keeping up with what might be smashing into Earth at any given time.

Conspicuously missing? Any official Space Shuttle feeds, strangely. NASA KSC twitters a great deal about shuttles, of course, and there are non-NASA feeds dedicated to each Orbiter.

So if you'd like to follow the final Shuttle launch, another good feed is @SSAtlantis for the Space Shuttle Atlantis. However, you're better off following my Twitter feed. I'll be in Florida... watching! Fancy that! :)

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

"The solar system is full of cool places. We just need to go." ~ Garrett Reisman, former NASA astronaut, now Crew Development Program Manager for SpaceX

While down in SoCal last week (or was it the week before? Sorry, I'm currently on Nyquil, and quite possibly time traveling –- life now is just a matter of killing time until the final Shuttle Launch!), I actually made a rogue stop at a little start-up company that may make some huge splashdowns in our space-faring future.

Perhaps you've heard of Space Exploration Technologies? And may I just say, they have a mind-blowing facility with room to grow, and the absolute awesomest street in all of Hawthorne, if not the greater Los Angeles area.

I am, of course, being facetious when I say "start-up"… and I could tell you why it's not a starter anymore, but then I'd have to kill you. I also could have taken some photographs of the interior – but then they would have killed me. That's right, no photography allowed on SpaceX tours. Sad face.

Dragons and Falcons and Merlins were all on the tour for my space-greedy eyes to drink in, but you'll have to take my word for it, because the images are only in my little brain. You have to go there yourself for the full monty, as it were… and one hopes they scratch together some sort of public tour by the time they make good on their intentions to create the successor to the Space Shuttle.

Last year, I wrote about SpaceX when they became the first commercial company to recover a spacecraft after it orbited Planet Earth. Certainly the space industry was all agog at this achievement, but I suspected that most of the general public didn't truly grasp what had just happened... what this group of young people in Hawthorne, California had truly accomplished. A non-government entity that could conceivably put warm bodies in space? And perhaps just the first of many?

I had the pleasure of meeting some bright, young engineers at SpaceX, and getting to ask them questions about their work and plans was so much more enlightening than reading a press release or following short sound bytes on the news.

They are busy working to expand their operations in Texas now, and their hiring process never seems to slow; their ambitious Launch Manifest spells out quite bold plans for the next few years, continuing to work with NASA, other commercial space companies and varied international partners.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Just one of the many amazing outreach programs run by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is "Imagine Mars", and it was my great pleasure to get to shake hands with Mars Public Engagement Team member David Delgado when I was at the JPL last week. In all of my photography and coverage of the media events, I'd have to say this was the special one that truly hit home for me!

Perhaps it was because I suspect many people are unaware of the extent of educational outreach performed by NASA centers, and how important it to work with children of all ages, across all regions, to inspire them in scientific endeavours. These are very likely the least known, but most important space agency missions!

NASA's Imagine Mars Project (co-sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts) is a nationwide arts, sciences and technology education initiative, bringing together scientists, civic leaders and school-children to design a sustainable Mars community for 100 people. Understanding "green efforts" and the health of their own community becomes the students primary research goal.

While presenting all the "Green Tech on the Red Planet" projects in the Imagine Mars program, David introduced an amazing music video called "Bye Bye Earth," created by students in Chicago who had been learning about how we would keep people alive in a Mars colony. Numerous other organizations joined their efforts to help production, and the results were incredible! This video is now available on the NASA.gov website, and on the NASA Youtube Channel:

"It's the greatest example of someone learning something, retaining the information, and expressing it in a way that's meaningful to them. We didn't ask them to go and write a song [or produce music], but they were so excited bout the information that they went and did it anyway!" ~ David Delgado

These are some of Pam's kids, and she was able to tell us all great stories about her work as K-12 STEM consultant; and the challenges and joys she sees in her everyday efforts as an educator who does her best to inspire children to embrace Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematical education.

You can also see Pam & David in action during classroom projects on the same channel, in the Imagine Mars Overview clips. There you will also recognize some of the same teens who composed and performed in the "Bye Bye Earth" music video, where they narrate their field trips and school projects, and even software development. What an inspiration!

Pam can be found on Twitter @TheNASALady if you want to follow all her activities at local STEM events, science museums and schools. For all of us who were present, I know we will never forget this inspiring story, and it was an stunning finale to an incredible day! You can see why they saved this for last! :)

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Today's post is especially for longtime reader and encourager, Suzanne, the Farmer's Wife! She wanted to see inside the "clean room" of the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), otherwise known as "Curiosity Rover" is being prepared for her trip to Mars!

See where that arrow is pointing? I've now stood right beneath the Live Curiosity Cam twice and watched the many mummy-wrapped technicians skittering meaningfully about, tinkering with all the fascinating hardware which will launch toward the red planet this November!

Did you Send Your Name To Mars on the MSL? When all was said and done for the etching all our names on the deck microship, precisely 1,246,445 names were entered from all over the world. Curiosity will take them all into space!

The rover you see in this video, and in my photo galleries is about the size of a car, and about the same weight, at 1,982 imperial pounds. That's just under a TON.

How does that stack up against previous critters send to ROVE all about Mars? Well the first, the Sojourner, was 23 pounds (10.6 kilograms). Around the size of your average microwave oven.

The Spirit and Opportunity Rovers were each 408 pounds (185 kilograms). Curiositydwarfs them at 900 kilograms, and will also yield the most advanced science and photography, provided she lands safely in 2012.

Today, is the very last day you will be able to watch the Live Curiosity Cam! After that, we'll only have amateur video, like my shaky stuff above! So watch for her final huzzah today, and join the last Thursday Chatat 9am PT (1600 UT) for your last glimpse of development and testing!

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

During my Tweetup frenzy at the NASA JPL, I actually managed to capture some mediocre video this time around. On my first visit to see Scott Maxwell, I tried to capture some of his tour, but hadn't quite gotten the hang of the new camera's video feature. This time, however, I was far more practiced!

Two of the videos turned out quite well -- and quite funny! Normally, I'd spread them out over two posts, but they fit together so well in the spirit of... SPIRIT!

Of course, we all know the Spirit Rover on Mars was retired... 6 years into her 3 month mission, as the joke goes. It's not to say we didn't get awesome science out of the lovely lady on the Red Planet, but realizing that she was unreachable was sad for employees and fans alike. Watching Spirit has been an honor -- working on her looks like it was a blast!

Here, @marsroverdriver shares a story about the Spirit Rover, having been one of the three folks on his team to speak; the other two featured in the video are Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) Program Manager John Callas and Robotics Engineer Ashley Stroupe.

In related news, everyone's favorite comedian, Doug Ellison, presented his smashing idea for a unique group photograph. Terribly entertaining! He truly tickled the collective nerd funnybone with his explanation as to how we would pull off the panoramic mosaic of pictures on Mars taken by the Spirit Rover.

Each of the posters, which we all got to keep, are one of a kind! I ended up getting one the hearts he speaks about in the video, and cannot wait to have mine framed. :) You can see the mad scramble to put all the pieces together in my JPL Picasa Gallery... what a madhouse! But the final photograph turned out quite nicely in the end -- whereupon we also took a regular photograph where one might see all our smiling faces!

The only thing we Tweeps couldn't figure out was why NASA TV hasn't given Scott and Doug their own television show yet?!

Monday, June 13, 2011

What is 365 Days of Astronomy? Hey, it's the amazing website upon which I was featured last week while I was gallivanting all about the Wild, Wild West! 365DOA is a "legacy" project of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009)… but built enough steam to keep going for two more years!

The project is a collection of podcasts, that published a recording-per-day for all 365 days of 2009… then they continued in 2010, and lo, they are still going strong in 2011 – named The Year of The Solar System due to all the upcoming robotic missions into space (Juno, GRAIL, Dawn, Aquarius, etc).

Each "episode" features both a small radio show and a written transcript, produced by astronomers, physicists, cosmologists and other… PROUD GEEKS… all over the world! So says Dr. Pamela Gay, the chairwoman of IYA Media, "This podcast gives a voice to everyone in astronomy – professionals, amateurs, and those who just enjoy the amazing discoveries and images of our Universe."

Indeed, the shows include lively discussions about space travel, research stations on Mars, star gazing, observatories all over the world, solar activity, black holes, mars rovers, various missions of multiple space agencies, and mechanical concerns of astronomers right down to their telescope eye-pieces.

Many other "citizen scientists" discuss the topics close to their hearts in the space industry, so if you have something to say, contact 365 DOA and say it! A podcast per day for an entire year is a tall order, and they are always seeking impassioned speakers to share stories with their large audience of space enthusiasts.

Over the nearly three years of operation, 365 Days of Astronomy podcasts have gained thousands of listeners. In 2009, the organization was given a Parsec Award for "Infotainment". Still going strong in 2010, they also won a "Best Fact Behind the Fiction" award. So go check them out!

Friday, June 10, 2011

It's rare for me to post two photograph galleries in a row... but then it's also rare to visit two NASA centers in a row! I guess this could be considered Tweetup #4, since it merited a trip out into the Wild, Wild West... or perhaps simply Tweetup Three-And-A-Half, being that it piggy-backed onto the JPL media events.

The NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) is spread across the California desert, on Edwards Air Force Base (AFB). Along with 13 others, I went to Palmdale, home of the NASA Dryden Airborne Operation Facility (DAOF) to board SOFIA!

Not just your average jumbo jet! The Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy is a joint project between NASA and DLR, the German Aerospace Center… and if you didn't truly know how cool airborne astronomy can be, now is your chance to click and see.

Why would anyone put a 2.5 meter telescope onto a Boeing 747, you may ask? Well, SOFIA is optimized for observations at infrared wavelengths that cannot be accessed by any telescope on the ground or currently in space.

Unlike ground-based telescopes, SOFIA can rise to 45,000 feet during her missions, well above most of the water vapor in the atmosphere that restrict terrestrial capabilities of gathering crisp images in certain wavelength ranges. Also, unlike large telescopes in orbit, she can fly home after each trip for repairs, parts and regular maintenance.

THAT... is what a 17-ton, inertially-stabilized 2.5 meter telescope integrated into a pressure bulkhead looks like. That monstrous beauty consists of many parts: the GREAT spectrometer, the FORCAST (Faint Object InfraRed CAmera for the SOFIA Telescope), the Fast Diagnostic Camera and the Focal Plane Imager, among others.

Yes, another day – another case of acronym overload!

For the entire picture set of the fuselage, science stations, telescope, spectrometer and scientists, see my Picasa Galleries And of course also visit the SOFIA galleries as well, to see what amazing images this special airborne observatory has already provided. Science just does not get any sexier than this!

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

I am so exhausted right now, I'm actually a bit surprised I am able to sit upright and type, LOL... what a ride! In so many different ways. I drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles to revisit the amazing Jet Propulsion Laboratory, this time for a media event with a good chunk of the SpaceTweep society -- and a few innocent bystanders who wanted to know what all the fuss is about.

The drive through a 400-mile-long rainstorm was no easy feat, but I made it in one piece; lucky for all of us, the next day gifted us with beautiful blue skies, tours of awesome NASA relics and novelties... and enough mission updates to keep nerd brains buzzing for days!

The many walking tours throughout the day included trips to the Mars 3D green-screen, the Earth Sciences Centre, Mars rovers labs and the Deep Space Network mission control in the historic Space Flight Operations Facility. All the geekery goodness can be found in my NASA JPL Picasa galleries.

A major highlight of the day was meeting @Doug_Ellison, whom I've followed on Twitter for some time. I cannot get enough of his new project, Eyes on the Solar System, a 3-D environment of continually updated NASA mission data, which he demonstrated in luscious big-screen detail.

Doug and few other creative cohorts arranged for perhaps the most stunning group photo ever, whereby they created a giant panorama portrait of Mars, taken by the now-retired Spirit Rover. Broken up into separate printouts to give a "mosaic" effect, we each held a small poster above our heads, and the final product spelled out: Farewell to Spirit 2004 - 2010.

He also paused to pose with me and my particular puzzle-piece, a lovely heart -- which in itself was a mosaic of pictures taken by Spirit over the years. I cannot wait to have this framed! @Camilla_SDO joined us, waving to everyone like the true space enthusiast she is.

All in all, a truly amazing day at the JPL, one that none of us will forget soon! Interestingly, I still haven't seen anything relating to JET propulsion... but hey, there's still hope. Tomorrow, onto NASA Dryden!

Monday, June 6, 2011

Third time is a charm! Actually, that idiom is meaningless, because the first two were pretty darned charmed, too. In 2010, I attended my first Tweetup at NASA Johnson, then a year later made more new friends among the hoopy frood space crowd at the NASA Ames Tweetup!

Today's Tweetup is at the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory@NASAJPL in La Canada Flintridge. Thanks to the kindness of the Mars Rover Drivers, I've already seen many wonderful things at the JPL, which is technically NASA's smallest sister in terms of acres, but certainly one of the most interesting in terms of projects!

The playlist is awesome, and I mean spine-tinglingawesome. Our crowd of geeky guests will be treated to updates by scientists on all of the JPL projects listed below. Follow their Twitter accounts today, beginning at 8:30am PT:

Friday, June 3, 2011

So the Mars500 wanted to know if people can live and work for 520 days in isolation on a space ship. But what if you went to Mars... and STAYED?

I've written much in the past weeks about Mars and the "analog" experiments that may teach us how to survive there: medical, geographical, practical, operational, agricultural, and the list goes on (and on, and on). Being a participant of analog studies and a promoter of field work in extreme environments, I know these work in tandem to provide very valuable data to the Mars quest. Is the next logical step a one-way trip? Do we worry too much about getting people back to Earth who may not even be interested in doing so?

I only used to see questions like this on other space blogs, or trade periodicals – but amazingly, the idea is becoming more mainstream, increasingly backed by astronauts, space industry personnel and laymen enthusiasts alike.

The most comprehensive study of the requirements are compiled in the hardback book, A One Way Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet -- with some big-name Apollo moonwalkers in the mix, alongside the gentlemen (both editors of the tome) who sparked what can now officially be called a rising movement.

A few days after the newest Post article was released, I was sitting at a table with a flying pig, a brown bear and a really, really shocked chicken... when Robyn Villavecchia asked the rest of the attendees at a BTS-1 Brunch: "If you had a chance to go to Mars one-way… not to collect rocks but to start a COLONY, would you do it?"

Many hands immediately shot up into the air without hesitation. Others had disclaimers such as, "My children are toddlers now, but when they are grown, yes!" or "If I wrapped up my life here on Earth and my family approved" -– but everyone voted positively. Everyone would go.

And these are not people who think you just jump on a spaceship and saunter about, like in a science fiction film. These are NASA engineers, Shuttle contractors, technicians and/or space journalists, who have in-depth understanding of the grueling training, massive dangers, the cost, the fuel, the propulsion technology, the effects of weightlessness on the body and the mission checklists involved.

And we're still on board as a willing crew! ...But not in a light-hearted sense at all.

Lives are at stake, to be sure. However, our exploratory nature has never stopped [some of] us from accepting the risks inherent in pioneering. Could we wait for a breakthrough in propulsion technologies that might shorten the trip? Sure. Mars will still be there. I won't deny my sense of urgency results from self-reflection of the shortness of my own lifespan and my desire to watch a Martian landing on television, knowing that we nailed it. It's about the only way I'd order cable again.